CHAPTER 1. TRANSLATION THEORY: OBJECT AND OBJECTIVES* Basic Assumptions Translation is a means of interlingual communication.

The translator makes possible an exchange of information between the users of different languages by producing in the target language (TL or the translating language) a text which has an identical communicative value with the source (or original) text (ST). This target text (TT, that is the translation) is not fully identical with ST as to its form or content due to the limitations imposed by the formal and semantic differences between the source language (SL) and TL. Nevertheless the users of TT identify it, to all intents and purposes, with ST - functionally, structurally and semantically. The functional identification is revealed in the fact that the users (or the translation receptors TR) handle TT in such a way as if it were ST, a creation of the source text author. The translation is published, quoted, criticized, etc. as if it really belonged to the foreign Source. A Britisher may find in his paper the phrase "The French President made the following statement yesterday" and then read the statement in quotation marks. He is sure that he has read what the French President really said, which is certainly not true to fact since the President spoke French and what is cited in the paper is not the original text but something different: an English text produced by some obscure translator who blandly passes his statement for the French statesman's. A book in Russian may bear the title: . . and the readers are convinced that they are reading a novel by Ch. Dickens no matter how close it actually is to the original text. They may make judgements on its merits, say, "I like Dickens" or "Dickens's style is somewhat artificial" or "Dickens's vocabulary is very rich", etc. as if they have really had access to the author's work. The functional status of a translation is supported by its structural and semantic similarity with the original. The translator is expected to refrain from any remarks or intrusions in his text which may betray his authorship thereof. He is expected to efface himself as fully as he can to avoid interference with the process of communication between S and TR. The structure of the translation should follow that of the original text: there should be no change in the sequence of narration or in the arrangement of the segments of the text. The aim is maximum parallelism of structure which would make it possible to relate each segment of the translation to the respective part of the original. It is presumed that any breach of parallelism is not arbitrary but dictated by the need for precision in conveying the meaning of the original. The translator is allowed to resort to a description or interpretation, only in case "direct translation" is impossible. Structural parallelism makes it possible to compare respective units in the original text and in the translation so as to discover elements which have equivalents and those which have not, elements which have been added or omitted in translation, etc. In other words, similarity in structure is preserved in respect to the smallest segments of the text. Of major importance is the semantic identification of the translation with ST. It is presumed that the translation has the same meaning as the original text. No exchange of information is possible if there is discrepancy between the transmitted and the received message. The presumption of semantic identity between ST and TT is based on the various degrees of equivalence of their meanings. The translator usually tries to produce in TL the closest possible equivalent to ST. As a kind of practical activities translation (or the practice of translation) is a set of actions performed by the translator while rendering ST into another language. These actions are largely intuitive and the best results are naturally achieved by translators who are best suited for the job, who are well-trained or have a special

aptitude, a talent for it. Masterpieces in translation are created by the past masters of the art, true artists in their profession. At its best translation is an art, a creation of a talented, high-skilled professional. As any observable phenomenon, translation can be the object of scientific study aimed at understanding its nature, its components and their interaction as well as various factors influencing it or linked with it in a meaningful way. The science of translation or translatology is concerned both with theoretical and applied aspects of translation studies. A theoretical description of the translation phenomenon is the task of the theory of translation. Theoretical research is to discover what translation is, to find out what objective factors underlie the translator's intuition, to describe the ways and methods by which the identity of the communicative value of ST and TT is achieved. The objective knowledge obtained can then be used to help the translator to improve his performance as well as to train future translators. The theory of translation provides the translator with the appropriate tools of analysis and synthesis, makes him aware of what he is to look for in the original text, what type of information he must convey in TT and how he should act to achieve his goal. In the final analysis, however, his trade remains an art. For science gives the translator the tools, but it takes brains, intuition and talent to handle the tools with great proficiency. Translation is a complicated phenomenon involving linguistic, psychological, cultural, literary, ergonomical and other factors. Different aspects of translation can be studied with the methods of the respective sciences. Up to date most of theoretical research of translation has been done within the framework of linguistics. The linguistic theory of translation is concerned with translation as a form of speech communication establishing contact between communicants who speak different languages. The basis of this theory is linguistics in the broadest sense of the word, that is, macrolinguistics with all its new branches, such as psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, text linguistics, communicative linguistics, etc., studying the language structure and its functioning in speech in their relationship to mind, culture and society. Language, which makes possible communication between people, is part of all human activities, of life itself. The core of the translation theory is the general theory of translation which is concerned with the fundamental aspects of translation inherent in the nature of bilingual communication and therefore common to all translation events, irrespective of what languages are involved or what kind of text and under what circumstances was translated. Basically, replacement of ST by TT of the same communicative value is possible because both texts are produced in human speech governed by the same rules and implying the same relationships between language, reality and the human mind. All languages are means of communication, each language is used to externalize and shape human thinking, all language units are meaningful entities related to non-linguistic realities, all speech units convey information to the communicants. In any language communication is made possible through a complicated logical interpretation by the users of the speech units, involving an assessment of the meaning of the language signs against the information derived from the contextual situation, general knowledge, previous experience, various associations and other factors. The general theory of translation deals, so to speak, with translation universals and is the basis for all other theoretical study in this area, since it describes what translation is and what makes it possible. An important part of the general theory of translation is the theory of equivalence aimed at studying semantic relationships between ST and TT. It has been noted that there is a presumption of semantic identity between the translation and its source text. At the same time it is easily demonstrable that there is, hi fact, no such identity for even a cursory examination of any translation reveals inevitable losses, increments or changes of the information transmitted. Let us take an elementary example. Suppose we have an English sentence 'The student is reading a book". Its Russian translation will be . This translation is a good equivalent of the English sentence, but it is not identical in meaning. It can be pointed out, for example, that the Russian sentence leaves out the meaning of the articles as well as the specific meaning of the

Continuous Tense. In Russian we do not get explicit information that it is some definite student but not some particular book or that the reading is in progress at the moment of speech. On the other hand, the Russian sentence conveys some additional information which is absent in the source text. We learn from it that the student is a male, while in ST it may just as well be a female. Then the translation implies that the student in the case is a college undergraduate, while in ST he may be a high school student or even a scholar, to say nothing of the additional grammatical meaning conveyed by the grammatical aspect of , the gender of and so on. Part of this information, lost or added in the translating process, may be irrelevant for communication, another part is supplemented or neutralized by the contextual situation, but it is obvious that translation equivalence does not imply an absolute semantic identity of the two texts. The theory of equivalence is concerned with factors which prevent such an identity, it strives to discover how close ST and TT can be and how close they are in each particular case. (See Part I, Ch. 2.) The general theory of translation describes the basic principles which bold good for each and every translation event. In each particular case, however, the translating process is influenced both by the common basic factors and by a number of specific variables which stem from the actual conditions and modes of the translator's work: the type of original texts he has to cope with, the form in which ST is presented to him and the form in which he is supposed to submit his translation, the specific requirements he may be called upon to meet in his work, etc. Contemporary translation activities are characterized by a great variety of types, forms and levels of responsibility. The translator has to deal with works of the great authors of the past and of the leading authors of today, with intricacies of science fiction and the accepted stereotypes of detective stories. He must be able to cope with the elegancy of expression of the best masters of literary style and with the tricks and formalistic experiments of modern avant-gardists. The translator has to preserve and fit into a different linguistic and social context a gamut of shades of meaning and stylistic nuances expressed in the original text by a great variety of language devices: neutral and emotional words, archaic words and new coinages, metaphors and similes, foreign borrowings, dialectal, jargon and slang expressions, stilted phrases and obscenities, proverbs and quotations, illiterate or inaccurate speech, and so on and so forth. The original text may deal with any subject from general philosophical principles or postulates to minute technicalities in some obscure field of human endeavour. The translator has to tackle complicated specialized descriptions and reports on new discoveries in science or technology for which appropriate terms have not yet been invented. His duty is to translate diplomatic representations and policy statements, scientific dissertations and brilliant satires, maintenance instructions and after-dinner speeches, etc. Translating a play the translator must bear in mind the requirements of theatrical presentation, and dubbing a film he must see to it that his translation fits the movement of the speakers' lips. The translator may be called upon to make his translation in the shortest possible time, while taking a meal or against the background noise of loud voices or rattling type-writers. In simultaneous interpretation the translator is expected to keep pace with the fastest speakers, to understand all kinds of foreign accents and defective pronunciation, to guess what the speaker meant to say but failed to express due to his inadequate proficiency in the language he speaks. In consecutive interpretation he is expected to listen to long speeches, taking the necessary notes, and then to produce his translation in full or compressed form, giving all the details or only the main ideas. In some cases the users will be satisfied even with the most general idea of the meaning of the original, in other cases the translator may be taken to task for the slightest omission or minor error.

Each type of translation has its own combination of factors influencing the translating process. The general theory of translation should be supplemented by a number of special translation theories identifying major types of translation activities and describing the predominant features of each type. (See Part I, Ch. 6.) Another important branch of the theory of translation is concerned with the study of ST and TT units which can replace each other in the translating process. The creation of equivalent texts results in, and in part is dependent on, the equivalence of correlated language units in the two texts. In any two languages there are pairs of units which are of identical or similar commu-nicative value and can replace each other in translation. The communicative value of a language element depends both on its own semantics and on the way it is used in speech. Therefore translation equivalence may be established between units occupying dissimilar places in the system of respective languages. It follows that equivalent units cannot be discovered with confidence before a certain amount of TT's have been compared with their ST's. It is obvious that a description of translation equivalents, as opposed to the methods of the general theory of translation, should be bilingual, that is, it should always relate to a definite pair of languages. Moreover, a bilingual theory of translation should study two separate sets of equivalents, with either language considered, in turn, as SL and the other as TL. Nevertheless all bilingual theories of translation proceed from the identical basic assumptions as to the classification of equivalents and their role in the translating process. (See Part I, Ch. 3.) Of particular interest is that branch of the theory of translation which is concerned with the translating process itself, that is, with the operations required for passing over from ST to TT. It is a great challenge to the translation theory to discover how the translator does the trick, what are his mental processes which ensure production in TL of a text of identical communicative value with the given ST. True, these processes are not directly observable but they can be studied, even though with a certain degree of approximation, in various indirect ways. This direction of the translation theory is of considerable practical value for it makes possible the description of particular methods of translation that can be used by the translator to ensure equivalence between ST and TT. The study of the translating process reveals both the translator's general strategy and specific techniques used to solve typical translation problems. (See Part I, Ch. 4,7.) In conclusion, mention should be made of one more branch of the theory of translation which deals with the pragmatic aspects of the translating process. The communicants involved in interlingual communication speak different languages but they also belong to different cultures, have different general knowledge, different social and historical background. This fact has a considerable impact on the translator's strategy since the most truthful rendering of ST contents may sometimes be partially or fully misunderstood by the receptors of the translation or fail to produce a similar effect upon them. The translator has to assess the possible communicative effect of TT and take pains to ensure an adequate understanding of its message by TR. This may necessitate expanding or modifying the original message to make it more meaningful to the members of a different language community. A further pragmatic adaptation may be imperative if TT is addressed to some specific social or professional group of people or if the translation event has some additional pragmatic purpose. In some cases the pragmatic value of translation is the major factor in assessing the quality of the translator's performance. (See Part I, Ch. 5.) All branches of the theory of translation are concerned with important aspects of the translator's work and constitute a body of theoretical thought of indisputable practical value. Suggested Topics for Discussion

1. What is translation? What is interlingual communication?'How can it be demonstrated that TT has an identical communicative value with ST? In what respect do the TT users identify it with ST? 2. What is the practice of translation? What is the art of translation? What is translatology? What is the aim of the theory of translation? In what way can the theory of translation be useful to the translator? 3. What aspects of translation may be the object of study of different sciences? Which science plays a leading role in translation studies today? How can linguistic research be classified? What kind of linguistics can be the basis of the theory of translation? 4. What is the field of the general theory of translation? What common properties of all languages make translation possible? Can two texts in different languages be absolutely identical semantically? What is translation equivalence? 5. In what way do translation events differ from one another? Does the translating process depend on the type of the source text? In what form can a translation be made? What are special theories of translation concerned with? 6. Are the relationships of equivalence established only between ST and TT as a whole or also between correlated language units in these texts? What is a translation equivalent? Should translation equivalents be studied on a bilingual or a multilingual basis? 7. What is the translating process? Is the translating process directly observable? Can the result of the translating process (TT) give some information about the process itself? What is the practical aspect of studying the translating process? 8. What are the pragmatic aspects of translation? Why might one and the same message be understood in a different way by SR and TR? How can pragmatic considerations influence the translating process?